


Almost Proof

by LittleSweetCheeks



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Support
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-16 22:35:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8120137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSweetCheeks/pseuds/LittleSweetCheeks
Summary: He tried to hold off answering by finishing his coffee, but found when he sat the mug down she was still waiting.  “Sometimes after a traumatic event…You need to know everyone is alive.  You need to know you are alive.  There is this idea, practice might be a better word, of establishing you are alive.”





	

Hotch leaned against the railing overlooking the bullpen and took in the scattered members of his team.  Rossi and Morgan were both deep in discussion still, heads bent together, While Emily was calming Garcia and Reid was hovering around JJ, trying to help her.

The entire think had shaken them all to the core.  Hotch had never thought the Garcia would ever be the one caught up in something like this.  He saw her as too innocent, too pure.  Yes, he was well aware of her past, but getting that call that she’d been shot and then seeing that split second glimpse of her before surgery, it had thrown him.  It had sent his need to protect and defend into overdrive. 

Stepping into her office with that other tech had felt like an invasion of her privacy, but it had been nice to be surrounded by the things that always made her feel the most alive to him.

A movement below brought him out of his contemplation and he looked up to see Morgan wrapping his arms around Garcia.  A tiny part of Hotch was jealous with their ability to be that comfortable with each other. 

“I’m going to drop Emily and Reid back to their cars.  Morgan wants to make a stop before getting her home.”  Rossi appeared at his shoulder.

Hotch glanced at his friend.  “Sounds good.  Is he staying with her tonight?”

“Well, her attacker is in a body bag compliments of JJ so probably not.  She’ll be getting a couple weeks off to recover, how will we cope?”

“I don’t know.  I can’t remember how we ran without her.”  They both chuckled.  Hotch looked over to JJ across the room.  Even across the distance he could tell she was curling in on herself.  “Tell Morgan to look out for her, okay?  I think we all need a day to get over this.”  When Rossi nodded, Hotch patted his arm and headed across the room.  “I’ll drive you home.”

JJ’s eyes jumped to his, “No, I’m okay.  I can drive.  You have to get home yourself Hotch.”

He was already shaking his head as she spoke, “I’ll drive you home, JJ.  It wasn’t a question.  Go gather your things and I’ll meet you back down here.  Don’t try to slip out on me either.”  He waited until she sighed and nodded before stepping away.

=====

JJ followed her boss down to the parking garage.  She was still thinking of the sight of Battle’s head where her bullet hit.  The sight of the door spider webbing.  They’d taken her gun as evidence, not that they expected to learn anything new from it.  Routine they said.  Sitting in the passenger seat she noticed her hands begin to tremble and splayed them out flat on her legs.  No need to let him see a reaction like that.

She’d seen Hotch pull the trigger in the line of duty before.  Always cool, calm, and without so much as a tremor.  She wondered how he did it.  When he spoke, she glanced up.  They were sitting outside of an unfamiliar Chinese place.  “Huh?”

“I said I’ll be right back.  Okay?”

“Yeah.  Okay.”  She watched him climb out of the car and go in.  Through the glass of the store front she watched him chatting with the staff, clearly they knew him as they handed his already assembled bag of food.

Back in the car, he pointed it into a small residential area and then into the lot of a new apartment complex.

“Where are we?”

Hotch chewed his lip, “My place.  I thought we could eat and talk. I called Teo,” He gestured to the bag of food, “from the office and had him make everything for me.”

“You guys moved to an apartment?”

“Uh.”  He twisted the key in his hands, “No.  I moved.  Didn’t want to disrupt Jack too much.”

JJ stared at him a moment, “Oh.”

When the silence drew out, “Is this okay?”

She nodded and opened the door.  “Which is yours?”

Hotch collected the food and led her into the building, “Upstairs in the back.  Has a balcony and less noise.  The landlord thought I might appreciate that.”

Inside, JJ sat on the couch and looked around.  The pats of the apartment she could see looked staged, like no one actually lived there. She tried for a weak smile when Hotch appeared with plates and the food.

He had noticed the trembling in her hand earlier and he could see it still now.  “When I first started in SWAT, my job was mostly knocking down doors, there wasn’t a lot of actual shooting involved.  Then I was part of a call that included some low level drug runners and in an instant I was being fired upon and returned fire.”  He paused to work on his food.

“What happened?”

“They guy was my age, looked like a kid still.  And he was lying in a bedroom with a set of shots to his chest.  All I could see were these gaping holes in his body and these stuffed animals that had been torn up in the fray.  At first I was okay.  My boss slapped my back and told me good job and sent me home.  Said he’d see me tomorrow.  Everything was business as usual.”  He took a swig of water.  “Then I got in my car and actually headed home.  As I drove the adrenaline started wearing off and…it was horrible.  I spent all night miserable and the whole time Haley was asking me why I insisted doing a job that turned me inside out like that.”

“She did?”

He nodded, “So I stopped bringing it home.  I didn’t let my coworkers or my boss know, and Haley couldn’t know so I buried it.”

JJ picked at her food.

“JJ?”  He watched her sniffle.  “Please don’t bury it.”

She nodded, “I just need a little time.  It doesn’t feel real.  One minute I was drawing my gun and then you were kneeling over him, staring at me.  The middle felt like it happened to someone else.”

“I understand.”  He put his plate on the coffee table, “It will hit you and when it does, remember you have an entire team here to lean on.”

“Okay.”

Hotch stood, “I’ll be right back.”  He vanished down the hall toward the bedroom.

JJ leaned back into the couch.  The adrenaline she was feeling was definitely starting to wear off.  She could feel her energy draining quickly.  She decided that closing her eyes just for a moment to block out everything wouldn’t be rude.

Hotch returned with a small book, “JJ?”  He rounded the end of the couch and looked down at her, sound asleep.  Suspecting this wasn’t going to be a restful night, he put away the food and found a blanket and pillow and draped it over her before retiring to his room.

=====

Considering how often he was awakened at odd hours, it took Hotch several minutes to surface enough from his slumber to work out what had woke him.  Once he was sitting on the edge of his bed, he realized he could hear crying.

The nightmare had been awful.  JJ was still shaken by the sights of Battle managing to take out everyone in the bullpen and when she had stepped into the room, he’d spread out his arms and declared, “You took care of them all for me!”  The gun in her hand was smoking from the hailstorm of bullets that had taken out her friends.  She’d killed them!  Suddenly she was pulled into a grounding hug.  There was a black shirt and the faint smell of familiar aftershave.  Her whole body was shaking violently.  There was a rumble in the chest she was crushed against as the person spoke.  Eventually her head began to clear and the words came into focus.  “Are you reciting a children’s book?”

The rumbling stopped and then there was a brief chuckle, “I’ve read it so many times I have it memorized.”  He let her loose enough to be able to look up, “You’re shaking.”

“Where’s the bathroom?”

Hotch pointed her down the hall and watched as she got up and carefully walked away.  He took the opportunity to find a glass of water for her. 

JJ stared at her reflection in the mirror.  She could see herself trembling.  She splashed water on her face and took a ragged breath.  Despite her best efforts at deep calming breaths, the tremors and sick feeling increased.  Moments later she was bent over the toilet emptying her system.  When her body finally calmed, JJ cleaned herself up again and stepped back into the living room.  The room was empty, a glass of water sitting on the table.  JJ sat and sipped at it till it was gone, thinking about how their week had transpired and how it had ended. 

The apartment was almost completely dark and only the hum of the refrigerator made up the background noise.  She was appreciative of Hotch for giving her space, and for letting her know it was okay to be upset.  JJ tried to get comfortable on the couch, but she felt cold now.  Like there was this part of her freezing over.  She reached for her phone to text Garcia but when her screen lit up she saw it was in the wee hours of the morning.  Her friend was hopefully asleep.  Wrapping the blanket around herself, JJ padded down the hall and nudged Hotch’s door open.  He was sound asleep flat out on his stomach. 

Hotch shifted slightly, rubbing his face in the sheets before roughly asked, “JJ?”

JJ blushed, she hadn’t meant to wake him.  “I’m sorry.”  She ducked back into the shadows a bit.

He rolled onto his back, working to untangle the bedding as he went, “Can’t sleep?”

“No.”  She answered softly.

“Come here.”  When she hesitated, he flipped back the sheets and stood, coming to stand before her.  “You’re still processing.  You just need to know someone is alive.  It’s not… It’ll help.”

After a moment she agreed to follow him to the bed.  She didn’t want to admit it, but having someone beside her definitely seemed to help.

=====

Hotch was dressed and making breakfast when JJ wandered into the kitchen.  “Are you okay this morning?”

“Umm, I will be.”  She settled at the table, “As soon as I’ve had coffee I’ll get out of here.”  She took in how he was dressed, “Are you heading out?”

Hotch nodded as he scooted a bowl of cereal across to her, “I’m going to go check on Garcia.”

JJ dug in for several bites before looking to him again, “Last night, this morning I guess, when you said sharing a bed would help, you started to say something else first.”

He felt himself blush despite his desire not to.  “It was nothing.”

“Nothing?”

He tried to hold off answering by finishing his coffee, but found when he sat the mug down she was still waiting.  “Sometimes after a traumatic event…You need to know everyone is alive.  You need to know _you_ are alive.  There is this idea, practice might be a better word, of establishing you are alive.”

She raised one eyebrow and then smirked when he blushed further.  This she had to hear.

Hotch sighed and rushed out his answer, “Proof of life sex.  I had started to say just sharing a bed wasn’t proof of life sex, but it would still help.”  He avoided eye contact.

JJ tried not to giggle.  She’d been on the team long enough to have heard of it before.  Hell, she was fairly certain she’d been travelling with them long enough to have _heard_ it before.  Seeing her boss squirm was pretty nice though. 

 


End file.
